If it's good enough for the Secretary of Energy...

In the HPC world, under-the-covers tools for things like file transfer aren't usually the story. It's what happens before and after data is moved that tends to get the headlines. The data movement itself? Not so much.

Yet in today's (and tomorrow's) world where data security is paramount and trust in web-based services gets shakier by the day, the transfer mechanism is suddenly in the spotlight. If we can't move data safely, we shouldn't be moving it at all.

Eli Dart at ESnet helps U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry use Globus for data movement between NERSC and ALCF.

Globus has come a long way since the launch of our online service eight years ago. We're a small team with a big mission: to support research organizations by making data management as invisible as possible, without sacrificing security and performance. Developed by researchers for researchers, and with tens of thousands of users as well as endpoints at virtually every major research facility, Globus has become the de facto standard for research data management. (Labs like LBL, NCSA, NCAR, ALCF, NERSC etc. use us by default.) With capabilities for data sharing, publishing, authentication, portal-building etc. -- plus connectors to cloud storage solutions like S3 and Google Drive -- people use Globus for a lot more than basic transfer. And since Globus is a non-profit (we're part of the University of Chicago), users can feel good about supporting us.

This week's picture of the highest-ranking DOE official using Globus felt like something of a milestone. The fact that Globus was used in the demo underscores how pervasive we've become and how reliable and easy we are to use: we're the go-to tool for securely moving and managing research data.